3 july 2018
I speak without stopping until he cannot stand it.
I be without stopping until he is no longer me.

2 july 2018
My breasts, upturned, wait.

21 june 2018
Why would you say that?
What conditions were created (by us) that made you say that?

13 june 2018
Facing my sweaty collarbone, with your hands waiting for mine, you kept talking about how the heat makes you impatient.

12 june 2018
What is it about the first "I love you" that stays, repeats and multiplies like a trauma after the person is gone?

8 june 2018
"So is it the same me from Monday?"
"Yes! Am I the same me from Monday?"
"Yes! More even."

6 june 2018
"There are already many me's inside of you", he says in place of hello.

30 april 2018
How can I be a writer when all my best words are sent to men?

21 sept 2016
In the kitchen, holding my tea, I kept puking up a burnt sienna colored froth. I called my local Info-Santé and the nurse, worried, told me it's because I swallowed feelings my body can't process.

.
.Symbiosis (from Greek ????????? "living together", from ??? "together" and ?????? "living") is a close and often long-term interaction between two different biological species.
.
.25 july 2015
Violence as life constant. Robust realist, that's what he calls me.

24 july 2015
I'm not talented enough in anything to act as abominable as I do.

12 july 2015
What happens to misandry if you have a body of a man growing inside you?

6 july 2015
When speaking French I always revert to one tense so my past and the future is always in the present.

5 july 2015
"You're not truly liberated if you walk around with feelings of guilt."
"Freedom is not being afraid."

22 june 2015
I keep rehearsing what I will write here before I go to bed, thinking I will remember, not realizing every day brings its own sets of things to write about, and accruing events in your head is like trying to catch up on sleep.

21 june 2015
There went time, on tv shows, on pulp fiction, on laying in bed, on doing so little of anything I couldn't not be tired.

16 june 2015
I thought this time was supposed to be filled with the extraordinary, instead I'm tired.

13 june 2015
Reason I have stopped writing: I wish it was better than this.

12 june 2015
Reason I have stopped writing: I fill furniture brochures with excuses.

11 june 2015
Reason I have stopped writing: I lost my desk.
It was a best friend bet. She challenged me on whether I could sit up straight and write a novel, or maybe it was my dissertation, instead of using the bed as a mode of transmission. I failed. In the bet my desk was up for sale. The same desk I had two lovers carry across busy intersections for me when I found it on the side of the road in a city I no longer know.

10 june 2015
The pressed colours
Under eyes
Buried in love.

9 may 2015
Writing many things like truths in the last three weeks; writing down all the pieces. I was told to. "You don't want to forget anything because you will anyway." I can always go back, edit, re-move. I need to write many many words. These years here make less sense now, now that time isn't my own.

17 april 2015
The sex was so good it turned me honest.

16 april 2015
What if my child isn't a feminist?

28 march 2015
"You have fuzzy socks," his foot reaches the top of mine.
"It's still winter! Of course I'm wearing fuzzy socks."

7 march 2015
My website won't load for days. I have tried everything but you. You enter my databases with all the mysql user accounts to be sure of the fatal memory errors. All of my passwords in your hands.
"You are so deep inside me."
"I am letting you free."
"Internet Magda, me."

4 march 2015
"We need to find a way to plan our future together in ways that will bring us together in other ways. I have faith in our ways —Thinking about kids can't just happen in a vacuum. We need to fill the space where that potential can manifest before it has a profile robust enough to express the complexity and gravity of that future."
I groan, "none of that matters to my body."

3 march 2015
"And of course you don't trust me, You've said that before." I tell him.
"In so many words?"
"Yes."
"I doubt I'd make a blanket statement like that. The question is what do I trust you with. Not some absolute trust."
"Right..."
"Okay, well, I felt you were accusing me of some kind of general cynicism toward you."
"No."

2 march 2015
A couple in love: "We are each other's orientation devices. We self-alienate in relating by recognizing the other as both that which grabs us and that which turns us away and into the world."

1 march 2015
Let's move at the pace of our desire.

28 feb 2015
They are in a box, but it is not an infinite obstacle.

7 feb 2015"Heya ya lot lizard, come here..."
"Huh? Dunno what you're saying. I'm fucking waiting for someone, and that's not you."
"Ya fucking cunt doesn't know what's good for ya" his eyes fixated on the truck, "who's in there?"
I turn around, knowing my choices.
"Gas prices are sure expensive these days, eh?" I re-turn and continue, stunned at my own fucking tongue. Why am I trying to make jokes with this guy?
"Not as much as commercials." He snaps.
I wish I didn't know what he was talking about and I wish he didn't recognize that I did.

2 feb 2015

I try to keep some of his semen in a small mason jar for face masks. It's hard to keep the temperature steady in the winter. I want to be sure the medicinal properties to make my skin radiant and youthful, so he will love me, stay in tact.
1 february 2015

When the temperature reaches points like "Exposed skin for longer than 10 minutes can lead to frostbite" I fill my pores with coconut oil. The same one I fed him on my balcony with a spatula in the refulgent sun. I mixed his semen with coconut oil and fruit into a smoothie. I don't think he knew.
26 january 2015

The first page was a transcription of a Mason Williams poem. There was no date. The lines were ruled with an unsteady hand. I decided that going through the entire notebook was too cliche, even for me. Or, maybe, it was the poem—the first poem he ever read to me when we were young, when we made love with lsd, when we didn't know we weren't ready for us—that I forgot.
25 january 2015

Lifting my cat into the hallway, I shut my bedroom door. I place the notebook on the edge of the bed, insert the batteries into my dying vibrator, and start to masturbate—the notebook and I, we, becoming the praxis of Barthes's Death of the Author.
24 january 2015

"The winter is relentless", I shout up the stairs, unclasping my boots.
"Like we are." He shouts back.

His excitable cliches. I used to make excuses for them. He doesn't read. English is difficult for him. One day, I had been feeling restless and noticed a differently-colored notebook on his desk. It was not going to stay closed. Usually, I kept a detached distance toward his things. He never saw much use in mine. But, a different colored notebook? I performed my role. Lifting it slowly to remember its position on the cheap wood veneer. Holding it up to my chest. I performed all the narratives. What is inside? A diary of his dreams? Love poems to another woman? Love poems to me? I hadn't stumbled upon an unpublished Anais Nin diary but my rotund imaginary didn't care. I, too, became an excitable cliche.

23 january 2015
How does it feel to extend your arms towards a person who is only standing in for me?

16 january 2015
"A total of six of my fingers are now tattooed."
"The same six you used to re-write all of Bolaño's poems?"
"The six I used inside you, the six that followed you around with my camera until you hated me."
"I hated that you were making memories as we were trying to live."
"But then now, we'd have nothing left..."
"You could have stayed."
"You know I couldn't. I needed the sea."

13 january 2015
Sitting with my legs closed in a place that doesn't want me because

fuck you

11 january 2015
I try to slow down, unclasp my right ski and quickly the left because the hill is too long and there are too many people. I fold my ankle. The skis doesn't stop with me. I tumble towards the evergreens. Whatever.
He finds me: "Ta folie/démence m'inspire. I know no matter what direction I go you are somehow already, there."

26 december 2014
With the cats, we drove across the highlands in a car fit for more than we were.

25 december 2014
It was a four and a half year game of chess in the end we came to a stale-mate and had no more moves left, neither of us was going to win, so we had nothing left to do but break up.

23 december 2014
I left the estival islands. Since I had nothing it was easy.

22 december 2014
I finish jerking off and then my mom shouts from the living room: "Do you have a second?"
"Yeah, sure." I quickly clean myself then go to her room.
"Look" she points to the moon.
"What?"
"There were some clouds passing in front of the moon and it's most unreal thing I've ever seen."

19 december 2014
Writing myself all over his arms so that his fingers, when they make music, they make me.

18 december 2014
I was about to leave work and this popped up: "*I just noticed now that when I send you emails it makes my fingers feel good or feels better on my fingers then when I do normal typing; weird."

17 december 2014
I arrive at work to his emails: "I typed and deleted like 30 things to you. I don't know why, but the thought of you being underwhelmed bothers me."
"Luckily, I keep myself always on the brink of destruction so that anything that underwhelms me is crushed by intensity and passion eating my insides. I want to go canoeing. People who don't appreciate you really bother me. A LOT. A LOT."

16 december 2014
"The thought warms, of time sync."
"I want it so badly I'm embarrassed."
"As do/am I"
"A d/am.
A dam between us."
"A/dam between us.
u(dam)s"
"The hours can be made to work in a dam free space"

14 december 2014
Him bending time for me vs Me becoming a gymnast

12 december 2014
Parenthetical bodies bodies in parentheses.

10 december 2014
When I tell them I'm turning into a desiring machine, what I'm really saying is that I'm falling in love with him.

6 december 2014
"Is this real?"
"I dunno, but let's act."

5 december 2014
Save me from my memories.

4 december 2014
Her pregnant belly swelled with me as his dark eyes, like a rifle, found a territory for war.

25 november 2014
"Another one?" I groan as we pull over the car. He's used to it. I'm not. I'm angry.
"Stay calm, M—. It's OK."
I fidget watching the cop's hefty walk.
He prepares his smile.
"Why won't they leave us alone?" I ask.
He stays silent fixing the strands of hair caught in my earring.

24 november 2014
We roll down our window. He asks us to open the door.
I watch his gaze typify my boyfriend's skin color.
"Are you here by your own doing?"
"Excuse me?"
"Are you here by your own doing, ma'am?"
"Yes. I'm here with my boyfriend."
"Do you need help? Are you ok in the car?"
"Huh. Yes. I just told you. We're here together."
"If you feel threatened and do not want to be in this car, please let me know."
"Yes. We are fine. I want to be here."
"Thank you. Have a nice night."

23 november 2014
a flower tangles my tongue
you planted it
to explode inside me

21 november 2014
I recite: "I want you to fuck me so I can die inside you."

18 november 2014
He's taken all of my imagination. I'm dying.

16 november 2014
Last year I turned over 100 in heartbreak years. What happens when there is no more heart to break? This is not some cheap metaphor. Answer me.

14 november 2014
He told me he has stopped sleeping to work on a program that demonstrates his love with infinite self-similarity.

9 november 2014
Sleepy. Nuzzling noses. Smelling prose. We take off our clothes.

8 november 2014
We are a pair, yoked together.

2 november 2014
Every day I ride the 501 Neville Park streetcar into the city and back home. My route is so long I eventually always manage a window seat to spot his steady hands. Cat Power's Colors and the Kids is on repeat. Maybe with enough plays I'll listen the guilt away?

Those hands—steady enough to write prescriptions, steady enough to administer the melange of pills, steady enough to use a phone to tell us he's ok. It's his hands I want to blame, but it's not him, his hands, his pills, his home, his telephone. He's dead and you can't blame a dead person anyway.

1 november 2014
I am home. Hiding. Lonely. I refuse to go out because going out means more desperation all over my body and I'm exhausted managing all the men's self-serving yen.

31 October 2014
With the amount of masturbating I do, I decided to give up on the gym.

18 october 2014
After the show he insists on Thai food. I compromise with take out. I want to go home to poems. I take my place, knee up, foot on the chair, phone in one hand, needing to post something that cannot wait. He's already on the phone with drug delivery because I can't even remember my own stimulants. I'm falling in love with him through another man.

17 october 2014
Learning how to be a desiring body in ways my language doesn't understand yet.

16 october 2014
My smile won't subside. I hide all sensation in my hair, as always.

14 october 2014
Today was so warm I wore a long dress with no underwear, bra, or socks. A young boy in a grey sweatshirt asked me for a cigarette. I handed him my lips instead.

13 october 2014
Anticipating the deep-fried turkey at my friend's thanksgiving feast, I bounce up to ring the doorbell and my yellow dress gets caught under my shoe. I fall. Laying on the foyer steps, his hands adjust my shoulders to lay down beside me. He says: "Tripping on your long dress is like my everyday. M—, you are often careless, fuck, even with me, but I'm always ready to fall with you."

10 october 2014
He faces me, I face the other. The other faces me, and I face yet another. This loop never ends and then I die.

9 october 2014
Five masturbatory orgasms to remember the best sex of my life.

8 october 2014
I walk to all the places we walked, all the way south, all the way north, all the places we walked in the summer, in the fall, in the winter, in the spring. All the places we walked kissing, holding hands, fighting, arguing, having sex among trees. In all those places, I, tirelessly, repeatedly, with some cheap orange graffiti pen, write out: "What I want is people to feel comfortable in the circumstance of risk." I know he won't believe me, but he isn't here, and he has left all the places we used to have.

7 october 2014
All I ever wanted was him to face me, face with me. My temper tantrums comprised of the most inexcusable of acts. Desperate, I learned how to shove myself down his throat, into his stomach, until he couldn't hold back all the bile. Desperate, I learned that in pain I could make him face me. The computer screen, the other people, the other objects moved in ways I couldn't, understood him with a language I couldn't master. I was never enough and his attention was never enough.

4 October 2014
I wash my hair with his semen because I only know to clean myself with the very objects that defile me.

3 October 2014
No safe space left. I don't want to die, but I'm running out of room.

2 October 2014
You only have one chance to meet for the first time. And so it goes...

1 October 2014
I couldn't kiss him with an open mouth because I was scared the words burning the inside of my mouth wouldn't hold back—I am in love with you.

30 september 2014
His lies are so obvious. Yet, he won't budge, tongue shaking.

29 september 2014
The ocean between history, between heavy arms, between nicotine teeth, between currencies. I live between two days when my computer's clock moves past midnight and it's still the evening in the other clocks. Those heavy arms and nicotine teeth, those belonging to my family, they are asleep and I'm waiting to catch up.

28 september 2014
The evening autumn sun penetrates my kitchen. I stir the dairy for the potato and cheese gratin with a wooden spatula with my right hand, balancing my menthol cigarette in the other. I keep stirring in the sun, holding onto the summer.

27 september 2014
I leave my computer's clock five hours ahead because I'm living in two places—between promises, between arms, between climates and farms. I'm living the ocean between us.

25 september 2014
He proclaims: Loving you became a full-time job and I wanted a slow & steady life.

24 september 2014
Returning with a back full of semen and sun.

< insert more here >

Everything in a circle, old entries becoming again. Looped life.

13 september 2014
Nina Simone sings in a tavern along the water. His French words on my sunburnt skin feel like aloe and it should lead to sex but it doesn't. He reaches for my hand, "Allons-y."

4 september 2014
I climb his arms with the accumulated snail slime. It is only after a rain storm my pace becomes resolute.

3 september 2014
"Each point has
its own unique
state of play."

1 september 2014
I hold the condom full of semen, inspecting him inside it. "Why do we have sex?" I ask.
"We have sex to make things unforgettable, so we don't have to remember them."
"Please take the condom with you, ok?"

27 August 2014
He holds out his arm for me to climb—gesamtkunstwerk in serif tattooed down its length.

25 August 2014
She pulls his forearm to walk up ahead dismissing my gestures. I manage to mumble: Tell me to keep writing.
He looks puzzled. He looks puzzled because he consistently insists on the strength of my writing. He has a way of reacting to my fumbles, always. What I really want to say is: include my writing in your (public) life. Include me in your (public) life. But I don't, and she has his gaze, because, she, unlike me, is assured.

17 August 2014
The most poisonous flower to cats is also the one most associated with motherhood.

16 August 2014
My body's way of rejecting him—skin lesions crawl down my arms and up my thighs. I am untouchable now.

7 August 2014
"I'm trying my best to make your ovaries walk with fire."

27 july 2014
All the Leos.

26 july 2014
Intimacy: 1.8/20 on the French grade scale in which 17 is impossible and 10 is common.

24 july 2014
(Us) A Bargain

13 july 2014
The way he fucked me with two minutes to spare.

I find my way to the Prussian blue dress I took off so he could suck on my tits. It's the only way I know how to come, but I don't tell him that. He assumes I come and says "sorry" as if that justifies his performance. Straight sex, inattentive and compelling.

12 july 2014
I orgasm & my body turns Lana Del Rey pastels. My vibrator holds its position as she sings, "It’s you, it’s you, it’s all for you." As long as you are not around.

10 july 2014
She keeps defending him. I repeat, "The best kind of man..." and slam my hands on the table. "C'mon."
Her smile betrays her judgment.
"He doesn't even have a big dick does he?" I sigh.

9 july 2014
"The best kind of man is the one that doesn't run away, doesn't hide, doesn't cower, doesn't get o v e r w h e l m e d after you've fucked," I proclaim. My best friend nods in agreement slurping her caffeine-filled smoothie. "But also one that has a big dick, yea."
I love her.

8 july 2014
Notes in a language I do not understand arrive envelope-less in my mailbox. I learn to translate them by mimicking his moves. And so it goes: "I can only hope we produce radiating full-fledged uninterrupted self-detaching safe-spacing circles of kind soon."

7 july 2014
"Even though he couldn't really know she had a thorough knowledge of life under really existing socialism, he felt the need to mansplain 'how life could be different under magical communism.'"

6 july 2014
Either the candles burn for too long or we didn't stay long enough. Even the water's edge-wind w/c/ouldn't blow them out.

16 june 2014
how-far-is-it-between.htm

15 june 2014
I come with the sun. He comes in my hair.

6 june 2014

A deep well inside my mouth filled with blood for him to taste. I hold his finger back with my tongue to relieve the pressure.
"In place of the tooth, now there's more room for me in you".
5 June 2014

Uncertainty is boring, useless and a killer of desire. Jump or stay in the shallow end.

It took me a long time to learn how to swim. I was about eleven before I felt comfortable & another year of practicing took me to the deep end. By now, I've swam in oceans and across continents. I can jump into waterfalls and keep my eyes open.

4 June 2014
I held my hands in front of my chest, out to him, and he shrugged.

1 june 2014
The feeling of being cared for: Being lulled to sleep with amens over the telephone at 8am.

31 May 2014
The men all come at once. As such, they also all leave at once.

29 May 2014
Something typed: "How long will you leave that body on the screen?
How long will your body be on the screen?
How long will I have you on the screen?"

25 may 2014

I show him my tortured hands—hang nails, half bitten cuticles, bruised knuckles, lodged dirt in the lattice of my scars. He makes a gesture I can't make out and he doesn't bother to explain.
Fucking listless.
24 may 2014

The flour coats my hands like a pair of gloves. I turn his traditio-national desserts into my own to feed him my longing.
22 may 2014

They tug at my fingers, "Mais maman... pourquoi? pourquoi?"
"Parce que mes petites étoiles..." Before I can finish they are already up in the air on the swings making up their own answers.

I walk with a deliberate step, as if they are tracking me, to watch for a chink in my habit. I am watching me.
"One lemon custard cronut please."
I feel my teeth ache at the sound of that word—cronut.
The gluten euphoria to split the dam open toward ire, confusion, and frenetic loneliness.

17 may 2014
His myopic excitement precludes me, and so I perform dutifully.

30 april 2014
We bike for hours deep into France to find islands of no cellular service. I want to live with the bees.

28 april 2014

While pouring buckwheat honey into my night drink, my curls manage to wrap themselves around my shawl and my glasses. He rings the doorbell, at least I hope it's him, as I'm trying to meticulously remove the curls stuck in the bend of my glasses. "Hooooooold on," I limp to the door. He doesn't have a key, yet. I open the door and avoid his laughing eyes exclaim "What's up Winnie the Pooh?"
"Ughh, there's honey everywhere now," I lift up my sticky hands.
He presses against them. "Now we're stuck."

27 april 2014
I want him to fuck me like a poet but love me like a novelist.

26 april 2014

I don't sleep for days with poetry. I type and write words one by one, page by page, letter by letter, forwards and backwards. I write out other people's poetry on top of my own. I rearrange his words to me to become mine. To become ours. I write his name over and over again. His family name. His first name. I send this all to him in a cardboard mailer sprayed with my Le Labo Lys 41 perfume like Anais Nin taught me. The salutation reads: You did this.

19 april 2014Why can't I ever time it right? I lifted the half burned toast out of the panini press.

No matter how much she tried, unless a timer was set, and even then it was never exact, she could never get her toast or eggs the way she wanted. Even with a timer, there were so many variables— the bread was different, it was sliced thinner or thicker, the panini press had more time to heat up... All these variables could never be calculated into a home-making logic. Eggs were no different— water boiled too long, not long enough, yolk size varied, eggs too stale, too fresh, and so on...
18 april 2014

The hot water reddening my skin. The eucalyptus wash between my underarm hair down to my pubic hair. I lift my foot and squirm: I need a pedicure. The loofah massages my scoliotic shoulder blades. No time to wash my long hair now. Turn off the water, M—. I tell myself. Reluctantly, I step onto a thrown towel in place of a mat and lift another towel up and down my thighs continuing to shed my skin.

Art. Art. Art. Art. Intimate art is not (always) autobiographical. Art. Art. Intimate relations for/as art. Art objects ? autobiography. Autoeroticism. Immediate annihilation of person as art object. Immediate suffocation of person as art object. Art object = love. This is a way of loving. [ I could never tame him as art object. He could never make me his art object. Is this the tragedy? Or is this the way out of the fantasy? ] I love your art ? I (am in) love you. I love your art ? I (am in) love you. I can't love you if I don't love your art. Love without art. Making one an art object and loving them, respectively.

12 april 2014
Talent is so confusing to feeling.

11 april 2014

"You are not crazy or aggressive, you are vulnerable & raw & that is how you enter spaces. Own that M—, because that makes you receptive & that is one of the things I love about you."
My cheeks striped with tears: "But, that means I'm receptive to everything... "
"But you must learn how to re-move yourself from situations that contain people you know will upset you, or learn to perform around them..."
"Why can't I be left alone to draw? Why am I forced to be social which just means forced to be overwhelmed?"

10 april 2014
"It is philosophy, happening." I tell her as she leans over the table and holds my elbow.
"And?"
"How can image be that affective?" I sigh smiling.

9 april 2014

Only by post do I examine the dimensions of each letter and its relation to paper, pen and hand:
"Each point has
its own unique
state of play."

8 april 2014
Foregrounding the encounter to do away with otherness and anxiety of overdetermination.

7 april 2014
The day after: my body stops belonging to me. The day after: I'm left open at the willingness of his hands. The day after: His silence marks my non-sovereignty. The day after: unbearable enjoyment.

6 april 2014
My cheeks flushed welcome spring.

5 april 2014

Standing between a sea of drunk black-clad youth on the bus because it's 3am and our conversation can't end and there's another bar open late near my place. The driver slams on the breaks and my hand falls into his.

3 april 2014
I make prisms with the light between his delicate olive-colored hands.

2 april 2014
A braid of our hair against a white wall in water color.

30 march 2014
I hold each word steady: "The snail allows ... depth with deliberation." He, on a rooftop that doesn't belong to him, tells me my words seduce.

24 march 2014
"Don't forget love," she tells me.

17 march 2014
"You're beautiful M—."
"You can't say that to me now."
"I never thought I'd meet someone who has this beauty in all the ways."

12 march 2014
"You have an eastern european look but a french vibe, which i really like," he says nonchalantly, unaware of my history with that image.

9 march 2014
Oscillation oriented ontology

7 march 2014
I stole his new Merleau-Ponty book and scribbled in the margins, one word per page: Proprioception as embodied knowledge to all modes of sensation.

6 march 2014

It's 3am. The cars have nearly all stopped so I hear all his words with my silent hands: "The real mind fuck for me is this: how can you say all these things about wanting to care for me when all I perceive is the things that hurt me? Is that just me? Is it me who can't see past those things? Is it me who can't see all the things you are offering me? Or is it you who can't see that there are all these other painful things getting in the way of you giving what you want to give to me? I agonize over this."

5 march 2014
We sit at his kitchen table. Overhead lighting turns its way on our hands placed just like when we first sat at my kitchen table with pomegranate seeds staining the distance.

4 march 2014
I stuff his handkerchiefs down my throat: "I am a fucking volcano erupting in the middle of a fucking tornado."

2 march 2014
I respond with my mouth wide open and my hands under his, "My heart healed so it could have room for you and to take care of you in it."

1 march 2014
"I'm gonna climb inside your heart so it feels like its being squished softly on every inch of its insides, I'm gonna stretch it out so it fits me like a cat in an armpit," he says pressing his legs against mine.

23 jan 14
"When are we gonna draw our tattoo?"
"When our hands are in the same moment/coordinate of spatio-temporal existence"

21 jan 14
Can't wait to Sophie Calle the shit out of it.

I recycle old intimate language towards a public that does not care

1 jan 14
We fumble out of bed. My thighs covered in menstrual blood stuck to the towel. His watch reads 12:42am. He hands me my life.

25 dec 13
"I wish you had been here. The cold was miserable - I don't know how people thought it was ever a good idea to build streets perpendicular to the fucking ocean, the wind drilled into my bones, I'm pretty sure it's still there, waiting to jump out."

23 dec 13
We step outside of the Hero Burger on Front Street, having a conversation about nothing at all, and an elderly woman with blonde hair and smile lines responds to us, "Say yes to him!" and we laugh awkwardly.

1 dec 13
Not giving a fuck vs Having nothing to lose

29 november 13
Finding unsent tweets from when the city was beginning to bloom: I fell in love with you to write you into my history.

28 november 13
My tiny frame engulfed by my huge fluffy coat, like a blanket between me and the winter ahead.
"Can I come in?" he asks.
I unbutton the top and usher him in, "but you have to stay."

25 november 13
What is happening to our limbs? They're all twisted into each other. Like a young couple falling in love.

24 november 13
My wet hair marks its way along the hardwood floor.
"Did you bring your brush?" he asks.
I nod, "do you want to brush my hair?"
"Do you want me to?"
"Well, you've been asking to brush my hair for so long... but it's getting dry now and it might ruin the curls, but whatever..." I jump up, move past my doting cats, get my brush and place it in his hand.
He turns me around facing the hazy New York skyline as I sit between his legs.
"It's not as difficult as I thought, looks like there's not too many knots this time," his voice smiles.
His succor moves with every graze of the brush along my back.

14 november 13
Some emails really do feel like a letter by post. Not in length, or in form, but in the successful transmission of affect across distance.

13 november 13
Save me from this emaciation. Bring me all the poems.

11 november 13
The mark on the skin as index of desire.

6 november 13
M—, Thanks for inviting me to your birthday party. I'll bring you a present, but you'll need to remember what it is. (Don't try now. Wait 'till then. And it's not a memory, but something you remember--not something to remember). See? Hardly wet, yet likely slippery.

1 november 13
Hey M—,
It was fun talking today. I was thinking, seeing as over the past couple weeks I haven't managed to suggest a time that works for you, I thought maybe you could suggest something for the lab (or whatever else) when you get the chance.

31 october 13
A cat in a box.

30 october 13
I watch my professors take on a room without taking up space. She's sitting on the floor, within her husband's lap, holding his knees between her hands and shoulders. He's sitting on a chair, half attentive and smiling, attune to her love’s recognition.

27 october 13
For all the years of pain I've remissly provoked —now it's my turn. Hurrah! Oh, you've come. You've found me! Just in time, just as I was ready (?????) to move away from it all, you've covered me in slanted mirrors.

25 september 13
All the people between our gaze as the audience to my hand reaching out to his, "Hi, I'm M—. What's your name?"

23 september 13
The headlines on all the major newspapers read, "M— O— on trial." I didn't see them, or need to. Everyone else, dutifully, had digested the news ready to inform me.

17 september 13
New York, everywhere I turn.

16 september 13
A 5521 kilometer-long open wound the salty ocean won't let scar. The ocean waves pull me south as he starts drowning to the east.

13 september 13
Staying home to read poetry. Staying home to learn new words to love him with.

3 september 13
The smell of an English countryside past the red curtains out my window. Mosquitos surrounding my etiolated thighs. Gusts of smoke filtering through my humid curls & another unfamiliar ceiling.

30 august 13
A_year_of_making_memories_thisspace.txt

28 august 13
To move him across my body, I find my cigarettes and my grandmother's ashtray —the only material memory I have. I lean back listening to Julianna Barwick's Forever on repeat. I smoke with deliberation and protractedness, focused on every drag as him entering me.

23 august 13
Another unfamiliar ceiling. The Doldrums remix of Grimes's Crystal Ball. Photos of pre-1989 Berlin wall on the player piano. Broken fan. Zucchini fritter greased hands. Rolling around on a vintage Persian rug.

22 august 13
My gaze moving back & forth like a boat on the South Pacific. Him as the ocean full of stars turning directions.

21 august 13
Holding onto the smell of the Chiapas. Olfactory memory is the most powerful.

20 august 13
In Condesa, I hide from the rain in an organic shop, ask for coffee sin leche, and listen to the language I know not. I watch people move in a way I know not.

18 august 13
I watch him sleep between the layers of white bed sheets and trace the world on his exposed shoulders down to his left arm up to mine. It is all I can do as goodbye.

17 august 13
"I'm going to miss you. I can't believe you are leaving," his lips move.
"I guess I just thought you were going to stay forever," he continues as he looks ahead onto the dark empty streets.
My delicate hand grips his shoulder, "I have learned that when you are ready, if I wait, you always come back."

15 august 13
I turn toward her wide eyed, knowing I will be acknowledged.
She looks over me, "He had the same look when I saw him earlier."
"Really? What do you mean?"
"Your faces look like you both saw the light and it was too bright."

13 august 2013
My eyes won't stop moving watching the sharp lamp post shadows cover part of his face.
"I've been thinking about your eye thing. That look is democratic."
"I don't believe in democracy… the look, it's all consuming."
"I like that"
"Because i want to consume all of you..."
"I'll have to use that…."
"...and also because you let me look that way"
"Because I like it."

4 august 2013
"I'm so glad you interrupted us," he says smiling as I move away.
A wandering dog's bark is all it takes for me to lose my footing. The terra cotta tiles do not ease my fall. The center of unwanted attention, again.

3 august 2013
She holds her brown fingers between my curls, "Can I touch your hair M-a-gda?" she says enunciating the A like always. I take her arm and hold it steady.
"Of course."

30 july 2013
Can I come in? I want to watch your world for a while, your moves, your gestures, your embodied orientations. In quietude I can take you in. In quietude you appear.

28 july 2013
We try to walk up the unlit mountain. My head under his armpit and my cheek against his white shirt held us together. It was late and I got scared. “Maybe it would be ok if another couple was with us,” he casually mentions and I burrow some more.

27 july 2013
He walks in with a careful step. His hug envelopes me completely. First it's the ribs, then the arms, then the face. "My M—, oh, you need some energy."
His girlfriend nods in agreement.
I can feel his fingers over my emaciated flesh as they push between my ribs.
"You look sickly, I am worried."
I think I should be but I'm not. I stand proud with bags holding up my eyes.

24 july 2013
I'm sorry I was early and it hurt. I was still preparing my heart for you. But there you were, and there I was. Can I stay?

19 july 2013
I wake up with his arm grasping my shoulder. His mouth gently open releases a soothing morning breath on my neck. Our matching bronze skin spreads over the bed. A cat's tail grazes over his ear & his eyes open to see me right (t)here.

17 july 2013
They come at my door, one after another, holding bowls, pots, mason jars, yogurt containers —all with variations of liquid food.
"Magda, you must eat. You're Magdaeats!" I hear them say, as one after another I tell them to go away.
My saggy body looks in the mirror as the scale blinks barely 110 pounds.

16 july 2013
5 hours 14 minutes 23 seconds

14 july 2013
Stuffing my mouth with ham sandwiches because I couldn't cut the carrots.

13 july 2013
He was driven to fear because I was driven by fear. I was anxious & nervous & so he became that too.

12 july 2013
All my dance moves penetrated by his —arms intertwined, feet in and out, head down doing figure eights matching my hands.

11 july 2013
I sped so fast on my bike that the pedals started moving on their own, conspiring to get me to him. I slid into oncoming traffic, ran past security on the bus & lifted my shirt to show him the tears running down my ribs, only to only notice his tears matched mine.

10 july 2013
I stood still in the rain waiting for him. A wounded brightness among his doubt.

9 july 2013
I wish I knew then, when we said I love you to each other, we meant different things.

8 july 2013
Being apart is very draining.

22 june 2013
"Why won't you let me be in love with you?" A question I'll never ask. Yet, my moves betray all attempts at emotive silence.

11 june 2013
I write out the lyrics to "Good Woman" by Cat Power over & over in the black notebook you left behind until all my Muji pens run out of ink.

7 june 2013
I stopped writing because I stopped wanting to remember, relive or imagine any & all of the/my/our future potentials.

16 May 2013
High-fructose Magda

15 may 2013
Making art with their pain.

28 april 2013
His fingers move across the table, the same ones that traced my entire body as a site of love for years. The same swift fingers that moved to mark my body. The same fingers that pressed against my breasts even when I cried. I let them touch me, because it's not up to me. I am begging for love and see nothing of him and everything of us inside those fingers.

17 april 2013
I fill notebooks with clumsy words instead of filling you with love.

15 april 2013
Why can't I shut up once in a while?

13 april 2013
Through the sunbeams his ebullient green eyes try to convince me: "I believe love is a renewable resource. All that matters to me is you."

11 april 2013
Sometimes you are so in love it hurts your body & you want to puke & run so fast your legs shake. It's the same for heartbreak too.

10 april 2013
I repeat what I said to him. I mimick us with you, to see how you will respond and it's never enough.
I mimic to remember, to not forget
& in turn I am never there with you
but with an image of him.

9 april 2013
"What do you want?"
"I want you to fill me with your love, I want you."
"You have me."
"But I want you forever!"
He hesitates & looks toward the long stretch of bowed hallway that used to belong to us.

5 april 2013
Dancing to Calibre's Put that Woman First constitutes years of love and now I cry.

4 april 2013
The Smoothie show full of bananas, mangoes, dates, ginger, flax & masala. Live from my kitchen every morning.

31 march 13
The womb is where the light becomes you.

29 march 13
The first time I saw myself as an object of desire was when a boy's erection grew in front of me.

21 march 13
Fumbling between the snow mountains, I went to the health food shop down my street because I haven't had breakfast food in days. I bought snacks, fair-trade bananas and cereal, but no rice milk. I even had the coupon folded in my jacket pocket.

20 march 13
"Don't be afraid of me. They're always afraid of me."
"Why do you think people are afraid of you? Do you know what it is you do?"
"Obviously not, or wouldn't I change it..."
"Think about it."
"No. How can I think about something I don't know is happening?"
"I can help you."

I do not want to be saved. I am not her.

19 march 13found words between language barriers —
I am watching you
moving away from us
because you are here somehow

everything I am doing you are witnessing
and I talk back
to myself

I am watching the projection of myself
moving onto the glass of my imagination

I like to remind me of you
but odors you left behind
little by little are evaporating

18 march 13
That moment we stopped sharing the everyday.

16 march 13
I wanted to write him into this but then I forgot, like always.

5 march 1351. Shock
Shock.
Progressing.
A shock comes, fright, fright!
Laughing and talking, ha, ha!
The shock startled in a hundred li,
but one did not lose the ladle of sacrificial wine.

4 march 13
Always the music between us.

1 march 13
Just because he doesn't see me cry when he is, doesn't mean the tears don't flood my entire apartment when he leaves.

26 feb 13
While I sigh at New York's pace, she tells me: "I miss New York, I miss the sounds, the vibration. It can be maddening, but I was busy falling in love & it sounded like the ocean."

25 feb 13
"I can't find a picture of my Mom as a young woman or teenager. They must all be hard copies still. There is one on the bookshelf in my parents' house where she is looking at my father behind the lens. He always took so long to focus his camera, it was a running joke for our family. She is looking at him in this way, as if he were taking time to get her in focus. She is very fast, always moving to the next thing. Her look is not of impatience —it is a gentle smile that rises from the corner of her mouth and greats his fumbling care with a gentle knowing patience, a teasing there-ness for him, a complete confidence in his love that does not recognize the depth of her own feeling for him, but that betrays it in the causal movement of that rising cheek."

16 feb 13
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14 feb 13
"I love you" burning the inside of my mouth.

The Gregorian calendar, the ruler of my life. I can try to fight it by partying until 3 in the morning, by coming in an hour later than I should, by condensing my weekends with experience as if they were five days, but after a while . . .
Time.

10 feb 13
The erotics of a shared Google Doc cursor.

9 feb 13
His footprints solidified in the ice on my steps.

4 feb 13
He helps me study by cleaning up the womanhood between my thighs.

3 feb 13
Dangling heirloom carrots. Except I am not a mule.

2 feb 13
Listening to Whistle Song 12" remix by Frankie Knuckles and waving my left arm propelling the wind coming through my morning window. I insist he come over & lay on my bed to listen to it on repeat.

31 jan 13
The difficulty in finding (his) love in the particulars of his moves.

30 jan 13
I wait half-awake in my flesh colored pantyhose for his long surgical fingers to rip them apart and fall into me.

27 jan 13
I place all the change found hiding in my house on the counter of my local dollar store.
"How much is this?" I grow impatient with my inability to count.
"7 dollars and 43 cents."
"OK. Is that enough for six pairs of these?" I point to the cheap pantyhose balancing underneath my armpit.

26 jan 13
My Ativan fell in the bath.

21 jan 13
Listening to Genesis by Grimes at 4 in the morning. My hair stuck to my sweaty shoulder blades while I make circles with my feet around his heart with my hands in his.

16 jan 13
"I hope I never lose you. At least, not without a fight, ya know? That's all."

13 jan 13
Researching instruments that hurt the most, take the most time & need precision & deliberation of my own pain from/onto/via the Other.

11 jan 13
"I miss you," I lament.
"But I'm right here!" he replies in a blue font.
"Henry Miller says: I have never regretted anything. Regret, like guilt, is a waste of time."
"All I know is that I use regret to fuel my every movement. Henry Miller is a liar because he is impliying that he knows what regret feels like. So he has indeed regretted things, he just chooses not to think about it. standard."

9 jan 13
You could not love me, I was a small war. I could not love you, I was a small war.

5 jan 13
I relive my own empty promises: "The longer i keep waiting for you to actually see me, the longer it will break me down, and I can't, i can't let myself, I can't let you, do that to me."

4 jan 13
He was my Mos Def, my most beautiful boogie man.

3 jan 13
I look at the image I have of him & in the snow's reflection descry that he will never be enough. Not because he is not enough, but because I won't move.

1 jan 13
I cut the pomegranate in four quarters over my wooden cutting board. He sits at my kitchen table, looking over, "I have never had a pomegranate before..."
"I love pomegranates because they are difficult," I tell him as I walk over with a handful of seeds staining my hands.
He smiles naively as I fill his mouth with Persephone.

28 dec 12
While I wait, sitting cross legged on the salty hallway floor, he tells me: "I am no longer trying to understand your behavior in terms of reasons that motivate given instances of speech or emotional reaction. I am trying to see your affect on others as a result of more temporally dispersed rhythms of activity welling up from movements that carried the energy that could express itself with such force."

18 dec 12
Silence is the most painful.

17 dec 12
There is a myriad of mirrors in my apartment, yet I've never had the guts to face myself. I try & my body seizes up like it used to with my teenage menstrual cramps leaving me paralyzed on the floor. The hardwood floor buckles at my weight.

16 dec 12
My boots echo on the dark empty street. There's a glass of cum I spit out on his desk. He dances wildly with his disarming curls. My hands lack the tenderness his body desires.

11 dec 12
"I want a long calm to be filled with the circuits that we make to force a stretch of time bend to us."

8 dec 12
I cry as I come remembering his eyes on mine and the sun always between us. I imagine my vibrator is his thick large cock, the one that always extends past his belly button. Instead, above me, is a familiar ceiling and not his eyes moving across mine.

6 dec 12
My body lost its organs. I see my skin & can feel the sensations upon it, but they don't reach me affectively. I close my eyes to look inside but there is nothing. Not nothing like a darkness, just a sort of endless nothingness —no color, no shape, no sense of anything at all.
He reaches out to touch me & his hands dissolve into the sunbeams.

27 nov 12
It is past midnight & everyone has left to return to their lives. I am spread out on a hospital bed with materialized heart break waiting my turn.

25 nov 12
"Will you take sometime for us before it becomes too much?" he asks patiently.dis toi, dis moi.

24 nov 12
I start rapping to LL Cool J's Doin' It. He moves across the room & his hands manage to nearly wrap around my whole waist.
"I love when you rap" he bites my lip.
I ignore him & continue to sing along, "doin it & doin it & doin it well..."
He throws me on the couch, his hands finally letting go to hook my black cotton underwear between his fingers and rip them off my hips.

23 nov 12
"Will you have a baby with me & hold my belly up massaging my swollen breasts..."
I received my eldest cat in place of an aborted baby. Now it is over a decade later & the pangs of child rearing can no longer be subsided by the softness of cat whiskers grazing my belly.

20 nov 12
It was my birthday a few days ago. I turned over 100 years old in heartbreak years.

19 nov 12
I want to tell her how heartbroken I am. I want to tell her of the devastation that's shattered my bones, immobilizing the same legs that gave themselves over to jump without hesitation. I don't want her to serve a passing purpose, I want her alongside me —but that is not love.

18 nov 12
My eyes were slits before she came and held them open with her fingers.
"M—, come with me," she moved her lips and held out her hand. I jumped without hesitation, and the arborvitae-covered mountains held themselves out to break my fall.

17 nov 12
I watch as the hornet gathers pollen from the leek flowers blooming in my yard. It lands on my hand & I am so still, yet it stings me anyway & stings me again. I don't move. I thought hornets only sting people when they are in danger?

16 nov 12
"How old are you turning this year?" they all ask.
"Why do we count with the earth's rotations and not the moon?"

15 Nov 12
DO YOU MISS ME? I scream on the streets, down the streets, up the streets, I play all the songs he introduced me to as loud as I can on my headphones to drown out the world & so I just keep screaming, "DO YOU MISS ME? DO YOU MISS ME?" lacking any gentility of the Sufi poets' ethereal murmurings that I admire so greatly.

14 nov 12
She comes over to cook dinner for us. I tell her I haven't slept & she tells me she hasn't either.
"It's the full moon in Scorpio, you know?"
I nod my head, "I should have known."
She sits near me and holds my shoulders and I collapse into her soft belly. I imagine the life that will fill her there one day and place my palm over it, whispering: "I love your womanhood; you are magic."

Two women crying.

13 nov 12
I am in pain. Is he in pain? I want to write this as fiction but I need to have the facts first.

11 nov 12
He asks, "so how is your brain getting oxygen right now?"
"Through the synapses attached to my iBook."
"If your brain was attached to your computer, I could hack into it and give you orgasms."

.

cathexis

4 nov 12
"Don't take me seriously. If there is one thing I can tell you about me, or our interactions, it is that."
"I don’t understand you at all M—. I have no idea who you are."

3 nov 12

He sits across from me, maybe a meter, maybe less. I cannot keep up with his eyes. What are they looking for? What do they see? I want to ask him, but I don't. Instead, my hands slide inside my skirt as he keeps talking.
"Would you like anything else?" the waiter startles me, and the man sitting across from me quickly responds: "No, just the cheque please."
I sit up as the bill comes and he pays for his share, this time, his eyes somewhere else.

2 nov 12
He hands me a piece of paper, computer printed, because he doesn't like to write by hand —A MAD ANGEL
That's your anagram.
I almost cried but started to dance to Robyn's Dancing on my Own across the hardwood floor instead.

1 nov 12
I travel across the city because he insists on cooking dinner for my friend and I. We are hungry so we agree.
"Why won't you cut your hair?" I sweep the hair out of his forehead, as he hands me a plate of ratatouille.
"Eat! I know you're hungry."
"Ugh, hair on foreheads is so awful. I can't stand it. I want to see your forehead!"
"Do you like the food?"
"I haven't ate it yet... I mean it though, hair on forehead, never good."
"Ok ok, I'll consider it," he sighs.

31 oct 12
"Look at me M, show me more..."
He moves my hair out of my face to reveal the twin cherries I've hung from my ear.
"Oh!" I watch them loosen and fall into his hand. He bites one, spitting out the pit and moving the rest across my lips and onto my tongue.

30 oct 12
We listen to John Cage's Ryoanji and turn into rocks exploring the thresholds of our dynamism.

28 Oct 12Underground by Murakami lays on the bed between the billowy pillows, shifting positions towards the modest moonlight each night.
"Let me read it to you," he says this morning.

26 oct 12

The sun finally came back & I left my house for the first time in days to greet it.
Walking towards the park, I look up, and the sun is so radiant it's burning my eyes. I write him a letter in my head. 8 pages in total. In summary: Let's make our own eyes, together. To see the moon & sun directly, in all weather.

24 oct 12
"Lay on your side, like that." He moves my hips, holding my waist gently, to turn me towards the window, "you need fresh air, take long breaths."
I look out to see the world move as he rubs my belly, holding his palm still on my heart.
"The heart is on the left side right?" I ask, because I always forget.
"Yes."
"That's where it hurts. That's where it always hurts," I cough my answer, coughing so hard that my headache comes back. "I hate being sick."
He holds my belly with his other hand, and it swells with our love.

20 Oct 12

I make it in time for the last train home. Settled on a seat of beer stains and crumbs, I examine my nail polish starting to chip, pulling up and down my index finger. I stop and look over at the man across from me, doing the same thing. He has a cut on his hand, just like mine, and starts ripping at it, just like I do. I bury my gaze into his hands, never looking up at him. We are strangers on a train.

13 oct 12
Point me in your direction.

10 oct 12
An earthquake rumbled between us, as if, the god of thunder, Zeus sent thunder down our backs. Right at the moment I wanted to hold on, the earth split and a deluge of fire made love to me instead.

08 oct 12
Unlearning abusive language.

07 oct 12

He has practiced the look of beguilement so much that all he perceives is his performance to be certain of its efficiency. I don't see him either, I just watch the cues he's perfected: two breaths; look into right eye; move gaze to left eye; pause; two breaths; purse lips; pause; stare straight ahead.
30 sept 12

I puked because I was too afraid to kiss him and instead ran home with mud snapping back on my new white sneakers. He had watched me undress in front of him countless times. His fingers filled me all summer long. But I refused to kiss him on the lips and he never questioned my reticence.

29 sept 12
"You have a tell."
"You said this to me before," I reply as he lifts his brows up in acknowledgment.
"But I'm not lying..." I reassure myself.

29 sept 12

We wake up after a sleepless night of falling between the beds. He reaches around my ribs to hold me, spreading his hand around my right breast. The disappointment reverberates through my skin.
"They've gotten so much smaller since I have stopped the pill" I say to him preemptively.
He clutches my breast tighter and kisses my back in silence.
28 sept 12

On the edge of the double bed that we made by pulling two twin beds together, he reads to me. It's a pulp version of Kafka's The Trial. We're in a motel somewhere in upstate New York and I'm on my period. He insists on reading until the sheets are sufficiently crimson with all of me.
26 sept 12

I watched my heart seep through the pores in my skin slowly, until I was covered in it. My whole body was completely covered in the filmy membrane that used to be my heart. Each beat hitting against my body as I tried to keep standing. It was like a series of church bells in time for Sunday mass, reverberating in&out/side all of me.

21 sept 12
We sat on the couch. Me to his left. Him to my right. Oblivious to the memories inscribing our bodies. Oblivious to the duration of our rhythm.

I live too much in metaphors, in parables and allegories. I cannot see the literal or direct in anything. This weakens me because I cannot grasp simplicity. To me everything is full of layers. This is my inertia. I cannot touch the core of anything because the core does not exist without its cover and the covers are so symbolic it is impossible to weed through them to find the core.I am in a frenzy. J’ouvrir.2 oct 2007

I said I love you on the couch with my eyes closed after we had sex. It felt like it was on repeat and I wanted to mean it. I meant it that early morning, but I’m not sure I mean it now, not in the way I thought I did when I had downed a carton of wine.